Shakespeare, Vermeer, and the "Secrets" of Genius

Guest post by Stuart Ritchie, Research Fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh. Follow him on Twitter: @StuartJRitchie.

Genius is under sustained attack. In the popular press, the notion that there is anything innate or unique about exceptional talent is viewed with suspicion, and regular articles and books appear claiming to reveal the "secrets" of great geniuses. Simply change your diet, or sleeping pattern, travel to these inspiring places, or adopt this new style of thinking, and you will be closer to the greats. The alternative—go back in time and alter your genetic makeup—is perhaps not so encouraging.

Might everyone, the genius-deniers ask, have it in them to produce a masterpiece? How masterly are the old masterpieces, anyway? Couldn’t anyone produce a Guernica, a Moby Dick, or a Mass in B Minor by learning the right tricks, or just by sheer grit and determination, putting in the hours of practice (10,000 of them, to be precise)?

For some time, the psychological literature has been similarly guilty of underplaying the importance of natural talent. But new research threatens to dislodge talent-denying views that emphasize only hard work and not inborn genius. Before discussing some of the latest examples of such research, I will explore two historical theories that claim to show that what we once thought was unassailable genius may have been something else entirely.

Shakespeare

Since the mid-19th Century, several writers have raised the “Shakespeare Authorship Question”. They argue that there is little evidence that the man called William Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him. We have only shaky (if you’ll pardon the pun) evidence he was even literate. We have no record of his leaving Britain, but several of his plays display intimate knowledge of Italy. He was not aristocratic, and yet his plays contain details of courtly life that he could never have experienced. Is it not more likely, ask Authorship Questioners, that someone else wrote the plays, and for reasons lost to history passed them to the untalented Shakespeare so that he could take the credit?

The candidates for the "true" author are many and varied, but most popular in modern times is the ‘Oxfordian’ theory, which posits that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the plays. This theory (supported by no less than Sigmund Freud, and depicted in Roland Emmerich’s 2011 cinematic flop Anonymous), rests on the facts that Oxford was well-travelled, well-connected, aristocratic, and was himself a poet and playwright. Not only that, but he was once aboard a ship hijacked by pirates (as occurs in Hamlet), was involved in a robbery on the exact same road as features in Henry IV, Part 1, and has several events in his personal life paralleled in the Sonnets. The Authorship Questioners argue that, given these formative life experiences that line up so beautifully with "Shakespeare", it far more obvious that Oxford wrote the plays and poems himself.

It is not my intention here to debunk these improbable fictions, which are entirely without merit. Interested readers are directed to the works of Shapiro and Edmondson and Wells, wherein it is demonstrated convincingly that a great deal of evidence links William Shakespeare to the folios of plays and poems that bore his name, and that he was indeed educated, with access to all the information and knowledge he required. Most important, there is absolutely no documentary evidence, contemporary or otherwise, linking anyone other than Shakespeare to the authorship of the plays. The Authorship Questioners (who appear to have been subject to a most unlikely nominative determinism: they count among their number a J.T. Looney, a G.M. Battey, and an S.E. Silliman) are picking up on minor perceived inconsistencies between the writings and the ‘mainstream’ story. This is classic conspiracy theorist behavior, seen on topics from the Moon Landing to 9/11.

I am far from the first to note that the Shakespeare Authorship Question betrays an impoverished view of human creativity. The idea that direct autobiographical experience, as opposed to imagination, is necessary to write about Venice, or pirates, or romantic travails, is not only a modern notion—unheard of in Shakespeare’s day—but also devalues Shakespeare’s genius. It does, however, fit snugly alongside modern talent-trashing notions: Visit enough of the right places, meet enough of the right people, and you too could be the Bard.

Vermeer

A dearth of documentary evidence is also the weakness suffered by our second heretical historical theory. The Hockney-Falco thesis, put forward by the painter David Hockney and others, seeks to explain the saltatory leap in the realism of the visual arts starting at the beginning of the Renaissance, where painters began to incorporate complex effects of lighting and perspective that moved their art beyond the often flat and oddly-proportioned pieces of the past.

The Hockney-Falco thesis suggests that these advances were not due to the insights of creative geniuses, but were instead the result of the artists using a variety of lenses, mirrors, and other optical devices that allowed them to "trace" images from the world onto their canvas. For example, the camera lucida is a small mirror placed above the canvas that reflects the scene in front of the artist. They can trace the scene by carefully copying the mirror; thus, the shapes and colours in the painting come not from the artist’s perceptiveness, but are simply transferred by robotically matching the painted lines and tones to those in the reflection.

Hockney and colleagues have hypothesized that celebrated painters such as van Eyck and Caravaggio used such techniques. One later artist who seems a particularly plausible candidate is Vermeer, whose small oeuvre achieves an uncanny photorealism seen in few previous works. The idea that Vermeer used optics was promoted in the 2013 documentary Tim’s Vermeer, narrated and directed by the magicians Penn and Teller. The titular Tim (Jenison, an inventor) painstakingly reconstructs the exact scene of Vermeer’s The Music Lesson, complete with the precise window and lighting angle, and also rigs up the optical contraption supposedly used to create the painting. He sets about testing whether the ‘tracing’ method can realize the near-perfect diminuendo of light as it passes from the window across the wall, among the other exquisite features of the work.

Hockney-Falco theorists are swift to point out that they don’t see their thesis as a diminution of the genius of the "Old Masters". Even with the technological assistance, the compositions, colours, and subjects of the paintings still had to be chosen, and were chosen brilliantly. This is not to mention the scientific and engineering skill that would have been necessary to design the optical equipment in the first place. Still, it is difficult to watch Tim’s Vermeer, which makes much of an untrained individual creating a masterpiece (“My friend Tim painted a Vermeer!” exclaims Penn once the imitation is completed), and not come away with the conclusion that Vermeer must merely have acted as a human camera, or worse, a human photocopier. If the master’s reputation is not completely punctured, it is somewhat deflated.

The Hockney-Falco thesis has been met with skepticism, and it should be borne in mind that painters—including Vermeer—never once reported using the optical technology outlined in the thesis, and nor did their subjects or apprentices ever mention it. Whether this is due to them protecting their trade secrets, or due to those secrets never existing, one should exercise caution. Critics have pointed out that, despite Jenison’s Herculean effort, his painting is still vastly inferior to the original; to claim otherwise would be to misunderstand what makes Vermeer great. The Guardian’s art critic declared Tim’s Vermeer “an art film for philistines”, and attacked it for suggesting that “anyone can make a beautiful work of art with the right application of science” and that there was, therefore, “no need for mystical ideas like genius”.

We return to our theme of doing down genius, though perhaps "mystical" is a step too far. It would be wrong to conclude from the Hockney-Falco thesis that a scaffolding of clever technology, along with some elbow grease, can turn anyone into a great artist. But what exactly is it that makes great artists?

Psychology

Exceptional individuals are made, not born. At least, one could be forgiven for thinking this was the case given the statements made by K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues. Ericsson maintains that natural psychological differences are not relevant for explaining expertise and genius, even in extreme cases such as that of Mozart. “The only innate differences that turn out to be significant—and they matter primarily in sports,” claim Ericsson and colleagues, “are height and body size”. The "10,000 hours" theory propagated by these authors and others—in which it was claimed that expert performers only really differ from non-experts in the total number of hours for which they have practiced (and to be exceptional, 10,000 hours is minimal)—has captured the imagination not only of the public, but also the scientific community. The paper in which the claims were originally made has been cited over 1,500 times. Many otherwise clear-thinking scientists have cited the theory without reference to the myriad criticisms that have appeared since.

Such criticisms have come to a head recently, in what is a clear swing of the proverbial pendulum away from "10,000 hours" and back towards "hereditary genius". A special issue of the journal Intelligence was recently dedicated to discussion of talent and practice, and in particular, to consideration of Ericsson and colleagues’ claims (Ericsson has written a response). Particularly damning evidence against "10,000 hours" comes from one paper in the special issue, on the study of child prodigies who cannot possibly have practiced for such extended periods, but nonetheless show incredible feats of, for example, musical ability.

More systematic attempts to survey the scientific literature are no friendlier to the '10,000 hours" view. Macnamara and colleagues meta-analyzed 88 studies of deliberate practice, concluding that, for the domain of musical ability, only 21 percent of the variance in performance was due to practice. That is, the vast majority of the variance is left unexplained, and may be due to other factors including differences in personality and intelligence, characteristics we know are under substantial genetic influence.

A beautiful recent paper by Zach Hambrick and Elliot Tucker-Drob shed even more light on the genetic and environmental origins of talent. Examining musical talent in a sample of twins, they showed, first, that musical accomplishments (including winning prizes for musical ability or performing in a professional orchestra) were, on average, 26 percent heritable (that is, 26 percnt of the variation in accomplishments in the sample was explained by genetic differences). Second, they showed that the frequency of engaging in music practice was even more strongly influenced by genes: it was 38 percent heritable. Most interestingly, though, they found evidence for gene-by-environment interaction. Splitting the sample into those who did and did not practice, they showed that there was a far larger genetic contribution to the variance (59 percent) in accomplishment among those who regularly practiced than those who did not (1 percent). The practice, then, was the canvas on which the genes were painted. In a world in which everyone had the same instruction, the same practice, and the same experiences, we should still expect large, genetically-influenced differences in achievement.

Admittedly, the psychological literature contains few studies of the type discussed here that address playwrights or painters. Nor, naturally, can it study individual masters such as Shakespeare or Vermeer, preferring to focus on garden-variety experts and exceptional performers rather than true one-offs. Nevertheless, since the "10,000 hours" theory turns out to be an extraordinary popular delusion for each of the domains yet studied, there is good reason to give short shrift to accounts that glibly emphasize the making of expertise at the expense of its inherited nature.

Conclusion

The public fascination with ideas like the Shakespeare Authorship Question, the Hockney-Falco thesis and the "10,000 hours" theory is evidence of a strange doublethink: even as we lionize the achievements and creativity of great geniuses, we secretly wish them brought down to our level, and revel in sublunary theories that purport to expose their secrets and crutches. But the psychological literature shows that to write off genius as only experience, trickery, or hard graft is to miss the critical—though still largely mysterious—contribution of innate talent, acting via one’s genetic endowment, to creative achievement. One can only hope that the new wave of psychological research on talent, pushing back as it does against "practice-only" accounts, will allow us to make real progress in understanding this most mercurial of human faculties.

I am grateful to Iva Čukić for helpful comments on a previous version of this article.

-or heritable traits-is viewed as the foundation upon which all genius flourishes...I suggest that maybe the concept of 'God' is equivalent to 'consciousness-which each of us possesses-so the issue is whether or not an individual follows 'their conscience,'so as to realize their own perfect form.

'Every blade of grass is different';no two blades can be a 'Vermeer':

God's plan for you-or your 'God-plan' if you follow it-cannot result in the achievement of a Vermeer.

Some may choose-or not-to bring out what they happen to be suited for,so maybe we are all equally suited by our common natures for the potential for some type of exceptional achievement,but without motivation toward a specific end-and the work required to delineate that end,no such genius will ever be realized.

But it is up to each of us to harness our natures to nurture our own potentials until they bear fruit.

This is an important topic, but it's often misunderstood. False dichotomies are one of our most frequent cognitive errors. I submit that there is a false dichotomy between the role of native genius and the role of life experience in creating the works of Shake-Speare (as Ben Jonson once spelled the name).

I've devoted hundreds of hours to this topic during the past 12 years, leading to some 60 publications on Shakespeare and the psychology of pen names, including in leading English literature and psychoanalytic journals.

My conclusion is that it took both extraordinary native genius and extraordinary life experiences and education to write these brilliant works. Those who still cling to the traditional theory have been unable to prove it with conclusive evidence. Instead, they begin with their conclusion, then reason circularly. They've been ignoring the massive evidence in favor of de Vere's authorship, and instead dismiss de Vere scholars with ad hominem slurs that we are snobs and conspiracy theorists. I've written extensively on the psychology of Stratfordians.

Edward de Vere was clearly a genius. He had the top scholar in England as his private tutor, and then began his studies at Cambridge when he was only eight. Genius, right? He seems to have written the "Arthur Golding" [his uncle] English translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses when he was a teenager. One contemporary scholar praised his poetry, written in both English and in Latin. He did publish some poems under his own name (or initials), then seemed to use a variety of pen names (e.g., "Ignoto") as well as publishing under the names of others, especially to disguise his veiled attacks on powerful figures at court in the "Shakespeare" plays.

The 1589 Art of English poetry called de Vere the best author of comedies (now lost?); one of the best Elizabethan courtier poets; and a person who preferred to write anonymously.

Faculty Expert on Shakespeare for Media Contacts, Georgetown University

You clearly state that authorship questioners raise the following issues: "there is little evidence that the man called William Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him. We have only shaky (if you’ll pardon the pun) evidence he was even literate. We have no record of his leaving Britain, but several of his plays display intimate knowledge of Italy. He was not aristocratic, and yet his plays contain details of courtly life that he could never have experienced. Is it not more likely, ask Authorship Questioners, that someone else wrote the plays, and for reasons lost to history passed them to the untalented Shakespeare so that he could take the credit?

The ‘Oxfordian’ theory posits that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the plays. This theory ...rests on the facts that Oxford was well-travelled, well-connected, aristocratic, and was himself a poet and playwright. Not only that, but he was once aboard a ship hijacked by pirates (as occurs in Hamlet), was involved in a robbery on the exact same road as features in Henry IV, Part 1, and has several events in his personal life paralleled in the Sonnets. The Authorship Questioners argue that, given these formative life experiences that line up so beautifully with "Shakespeare", it far more obvious that Oxford wrote the plays and poems himself."

That is a very well-stated rational argument, documented circumstantial evidence that Oxford wrote the canon, but then you go on to negate it by calling it "entirely without merit" and point us to the works of Shapiro and Edmondson and Wells, books that do not indeed discuss the issues raised by the doubters but only question their motives in daring to disagree with the status quo.

Your statement that "he was indeed educated, with access to all the information and knowledge he required" lacks any kind of documentary evidence whatsoever. We have no records that he even attended grammar school. Indeed, there is no accounting for the detailed knowledge of the law, medicine, foreign languages, Italy, the court and aristocratic society, and sports such as falconry, tennis, jousting, fencing, and coursing that appears in the plays.

Howard: How is it that you criticize the author of this piece for failing to produce "any kind of documentary evidence whatsoever" while you 1.) ignore the fact that there isn't a shred of any kind of documentary evidence to support your Oxenfordian theory, and 2.) you summarily dismiss the documentary evidence in the historical record which does, in fact, support the proposition that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare. Does that seem logically consistent to you?

Since Dr. Waugaman is playing the nice guy here, allow me to be a bit more blunt, Dr. Wai. You write: The public fascination with ideas like the Shakespeare Authorship Question, the Hockney-Falco thesis and the "10,000 hours" theory is evidence of a strange doublethink: even as we lionize the achievements and creativity of great geniuses, we secretly wish them brought down to our level..."

On the contrary, this statement reveals a lack of familiarity with the topic on which you presume to enlighten your readers, coupled with an ironic dependence on Freudian notions of envy. You assume that psychoanalyzing those who, unlike you, possess enough information to understand the basis of reasonable doubt is sufficient exonerate you from the responsibility to understand the nature and content of their arguments. In classical terms, you oppose logos with pathos. As long ago as 1985, writing before the most recent and dynamic phase of the Oxfordian scholarship over the last thirty years, Folger Library Educations Director Richmond Crinkley, writing in the Shakespeare Quarterly, noted that "doubts about Shakespeare's authorship emerged early and have a simple and direct plausibility."

"The plausibility," continued Crinkley, "has been reinforced by the tone and methods by which traditional scholarship has responded to the doubts.”

Thank you for the clarification, and apologies for the misunderstanding. It would be great to have some discussion with the author, although he needs to realize that by blindly following established authority figures into print, he is now dealing with a significant number of persons who are displeased at (once again) being called idiots in print by someone who didn't do his homework and failed to realize that this is a serious topic with a paradigm shift in statu nascendi. Moreover, it is a critical test case for theories of genius, since Shakespeare is the outstanding example of a world historical literary genius whose biography is utterly contradictory to the content of his alleged works. By contrast, the de Vere biography fits the works like a glove.

As for the further assumption that the Oxfordians are diminishing the author's genius, nothing could be further from the truth -- but again, those who are not familiar with Oxfordian scholarship and proceed from an priori faith in the established Shakespeare experts seem to project their own impulses very readily onto those whom they imagine to be their critics. I anything, the full genius of the author -- his clever ability to infuse his comedies with topical comment, his adroit and self-revelatory wordplay, his habitual hiding behind the mask of his own court fools, etc. -- becomes fully apparent for those with ears to apprehend his concealed identity.

Authorship is, ultimately, among the greatest and most fundamental themes of the Shakespearean oeuvre, and those who continue to dismissively reject any inquiry into the origins of the works except for the orthodox one must more and more fight the very language they propose to elucidate, e.g. the punstering wit of Sonnet 76:

Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name.

So the guy from Stratford just had the right stuff and not years of education (languages and literature of other countries, much unpublished in English) and experience (of travel, meeting diverse persons, family lore, and unusual incidents that happened to him), not to say, resources.The paragraph beginning,"It is not my intention here..." sounds like the author is trying to get through it in one breath, as if he subconsciously understands that the conventional defenses he presents seem compelling enough to him because he does not himself know enough about the works and history and these authors' use of the subjunctive case used over and over in these works. He must also be embarrassed that he feels compelled to bring up the "nominative" issue of those who became suspicious of the original refutation. Truly educated people are expected to know Shakespeare well and it is pitiable that so many people have to bluff their way.

Jonathan Wai tries to dress his giant straw-man with “psychological literature,” but it's still just a straw-man.

“But the psychological literature shows that to write off genius as only experience, trickery, or hard graft is to miss the critical—though still largely mysterious—contribution of innate talent, acting via one’s genetic endowment, to creative achievement.”

I have to apologize to Dr. Wai, if I have wrongly attributed to him what I should have to Dr. Ritchie.

This article begins:

“Finding the Next Einstein
Why smart is relative
by Jonathan Wai
Shakespeare, Vermeer, and the "Secrets" of Genius
Genius: infinite in faculty, or just well-practiced?
Published on July 18, 2014 by Jonathan Wai, Ph.D. in Finding the Next Einstein”

But it also says:

“Guest post by Stuart Ritchie, Research Fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh. Follow him on Twitter: @StuartJRitchie.”

I guess one should never trust a simple name is on a document without looking a little deeper. ;)

I don't know how this incomprehensible mish-mash ever got past the editors. The author seems to be debunking a theory of genius that doesn't exist. No one ever posited that 10K hours of practice would produce genius! I bet this guy never read Csikszentmihalyi or anything but popular press on the topic; he clearly doesn't understand the issue at all.

I'm not the author of the article, but I did host it on my blog. And actually, Anders Ericsson and colleagues have indeed posited a "practice only" account of expertise. This is also commonly known as the 10,000 hour rule as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. However, I agree with you that of course talent, practice, and other factors go into the development of genius. This is precisely why it is so shocking that the practice only account gets so much attention in the press. In fact, the debate seems to be "practice only" vs. "talent + practice + other factors." -Jon

Geoffrey, your comment focuses our attention on the extent to which Wai, in order to defend the Stratford straw man, must depend on the concept of the miraculous factor of "genetic endowment." While it would be rash to insist that genetics does not play a significant role in the creation of genius, it is equally absurd to imply that whatever genetic potential a person is born with can come to fruition without the proper tending and resources. The more one learns about "Shakespeare" the more obvious it becomes that the circumstances which contributed to the development of his talent, not to mention the complexes that are on display in the work, are congruent with those surrounding de Vere's educational milieu (with Sir Thomas Smith and later at Burghley house, at Gray's Inn, or later still among his literary friends and confidantes) and expressive of his life experiences.

I think Roger's comparison of Oxenfordians to fleas is hilariously apt, as is his estimation that very little ammunition is necessary to blow their arguments to smithereens. All that is required is a bit of flea powder.

Leadbetter's scud was a dud. These faulty-in-paraphrasis, dying-paradigm slinging orthodux parasites think just because someone makes an analogy between ideas, that said ideas are the same as, in their over-general logic, A folks. They still cannot get over the fact that there is no proof whatsoever that their mythical totem, Will Shaks, ever wrote anything. Beware statements of no evidence! Why are they here? Flea powder is notoriously ineffective, as are their ad pulicem arguments.

Another example of inaccurate Oxenfordian attribution. It was Mr. Tom Reedy who was alleged by Roger to have fired the scud, not Mr. Leadbetter.

As for my sense of logic, I don't believe I need to take any correction from someone who wrote the following incoherent babble:

>> "These faulty-in-paraphrasis, dying-paradigm slinging orthodux parasites think just because someone makes an analogy between ideas, that said ideas are the same as, in their over-general logic, A folks."

Was that written after too much ETOH?

>> " They still cannot get over the fact that there is no proof whatsoever that their mythical totem, Will Shaks, ever wrote anything. Beware statements of no evidence!"

There certainly is more than enough evidence to establish a prima facie case that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare. There is documentary, testimonial physical evidence tending to prove that proposition. As for your religious faith in your Lord we are still awaiting the first shred of evidence, direct or circumstantial, that he wrote anything other than the middling poetry which has been attributed to him. Here is your opportunity, Shelphi -- please identify one to three pieces of evidence which you would contend most strongly support your theory that de Vere wrote Shakespeare.

The reader should beware of statements by Oxenfordians that they have plenty of evidence in so much as those statements never appear to lead to any Oxenfordian identification of such evidence. I can't get over the fact that when you are challenged to produce evidence none ever seems to be forthcoming.

> Another example of inaccurate Oxenfordian attribution. It was Mr. Tom Reedy who was alleged by Roger to have fired the scud, not Mr. Leadbetter.

In fact, Ms. Shelphi correctly identified Mr. Leadbetter as the author of this comment:
> The Flying Scud.
> Submitted by Mike Leadbetter on July 22, 2014 - 12:39am.
> is an excellent pub in Bethnal Green.

> "These faulty-in-paraphrasis, dying-paradigm slinging orthodux parasites think just because someone makes an analogy between ideas, that said ideas are the same as, in their over-general logic, A folks."

My thanks to all the dyspeptic Oxfordians above for their comments. They are, as Tom Reedy notes above, beautifully ironic: Jonathan very kindly hosted my article, but he didn't write it!

I just wanted to note that, in the article, I linked to both sides of the argument for all three areas (Shakespeare, Vermeer, and 10,000 hours). Specifically, for the Shakespeare question, I linked to a book-length rebuttal of Stratfordian arguments; the online Oxfordian petition with tons of links to other Oxfordian articles; and a very long and detailed multi-part Oxfordian blog. So I think it's somewhat unfair, as Roger Stritmatter does above, to come in complaining grumpily about specific books I'd recommended - I tried to at least allow the reader to see both arguments, even though I come down on the side of the Stratfordians. This even-handedness is, incidentally, something you rarely see from Oxfordians.

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate."

Stuart Ritchie, thanks for your response which is very measured, other than calling Oxfordians dyspeptic, grumpy, and less than even-handed. You are perhaps unaware that nearly every Oxfordian was once, like you, a Stratfordian. Is there a better definition of even-handedness than to fairly evaluate both sides without predetermination?

As to dyspeptic and grumpy, I think you are right, it would serve no purpose to argue about name calling in an academic setting such as this. We might as well argue that we are not silly, batty, and loony in the face of your clear evidence to the contrary.

It's especially rich to get a lecture on treating your opponent fairly from a writer who started off with such a balanced treatment, giving links to the loonies and batties, and then goes on to say that it doesn't matter anyway, because you are just writing in the comments section. Note that it seems impossible to imagine that just perhaps some persons might read these comments and realize that the writer was as full of himself as James Shapiro and that neither is a reliable guide to the future of the paradigm shift.

Are you a ghost writer? LOL. Authorship scholarship clangs and rattles along merrily without the need for ghosts. It certainly never promoted the notion of degrading "Shakespeare" as you claim. But one thing educated us quickly (without the need for practice - try it) is the obvious confusion to readers caused by comments about "Shakespeare" which do not distinguish the Stratford man from the "Shakespeare" works. The Startford man first promoted back in the late 1770s by David Garrick turned out after 400 years of scholarship to be nothing more than a mediocre actor and thug.

"We happen to believe". That's nice. Researchers happen to use evidence when discussing history. Maybe if the SAQers could learn to conduct research, Shakespeareans would be interested in their findings. Until then, we happen to know for fact you have nothing that proves your candidate authored the works of Shakespeare.

The same exact statement is true of orthodox Shakespeare scholars and their amateur defenders on this discussion board with regard to having evidence that Will Shakspere did the actual writing. And when are you publishing your research, Knit?

Thanks for bringing snails into our discussion, Knit. Caroline Spurgeon, in 1935, noticed Shakespeare's unusual empathy for snails. That helped me to attribute an anonymous poem from the Paradise of Daintie Devises to de Vere--

No, the same exact statement is not true of orthodox Shakespeare scholars. It is a fact, one which you can ignore or dismiss if you so choose, that direct and circumstantial evidence exists, in the contemporary, historical record, which specifically identifies William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author. To state otherwise is not an honest assessment of the case. It is also a fact that there is no such evidence for your Lord de Vere. In order to maintain your conspiracy theory you will need to honestly deal with these facts with something more than conjecture and speculation and wishful thinking. So far, you are failing miserably.

You could perhaps feel less irritated by Oxfordians if their candidate had troubled to exhibit signs of genius himself but as you can see from Doctor Waugaman's post, apart from a couple of bits of essential deference, the claim relies entirely on who he knew and where he lived. It is utterly impossible to find any signs of genius in his work, his writing or his actions. He can only be made remarkable by having genius thrust upon him in the form of someone else's work.

"Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing; settled in the imagination, but never arriving at the understanding, there to obtain the tincture of reason. We labor with it more than truth. There is much more holds us than presseth us. An ill fact is one thing, an ill fortune is another; yet both oftentimes sway us alike, by the error of our thinking."

"Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing; settled in the imagination, but never arriving at the understanding, there to obtain the tincture of reason. We labor with it more than truth. There is much more holds us than presseth us. An ill fact is one thing, an ill fortune is another; yet both oftentimes sway us alike, by the error of our thinking."

From your Time Out of Mind page: “I’m a PhD Psychology student in the Psychology Department at The University of Edinburgh. My research focuses on two questions: (a) which educational interventions improve learning, and which don’t work?, and (b) what are the effects of education, anyway? I also have secondary interests in other areas, like the psychology of religion and the paranormal.”

Mr. Ritchie, my question to you is two-part: (a) what specific “educational intervention” took place during Will Shakspeare’s “lost years” which caused him to produce the greatest literature in the English language?, and (b) what are the effects of the suppression of scholarly inquiry on academia and on society as a whole?

I find it ironic that someone whose interest is the paranormal would side with Stratfordians, who routinely deride the Authorship Question as an “illegitimate” field of study.

You have failed to understand the author. Education means 'bringing out' not 'stuffing in'. Educational. 'Interventions' can have a detrimental effect on genius. You can't teach people to write like Shakespeare or paint like Vermeer. If you could there would be more than one of each.

However accurately you copy Vermeer's draughtmanship and colour schemes you will never fool a child with your reproductions until you can work out how he managed to produce his incredible shiny, jewelled reflective surfaces from dozens of layers of underpainting and thinly coloured glazes.

Same with Will. Go find someone who has better expressed the quality of mercy in fewer words. See you in 20 years.

Mike brings up an excellent point re "You have failed to understand the author. Education means 'bringing out' not 'stuffing in'. Educational. 'Interventions' can have a detrimental effect on genius. You can't teach people to write like Shakespeare or paint like Vermeer. If you could there would be more than one of each."

How hard is this to understand. There is NO rhyme or reason to genius. It cannot be structured and pigeon-holed to fit any conventional notions. Genius flourishes on its own accord. There is no understanding what brings it out other than freedom to explore but any restrictions imposed on such exploration is a killer.

As for Anka's "(b) what are the effects of the suppression of scholarly inquiry on academia and on society as a whole?"

No one is suppressing anything regarding your obvious chosen field of Oxfordianism. That their papers go unpublished in mainstream is a testament to the lack of interest in a non-evidentiary subject and/or poorly written articles submitted to journals which, needless to say, have limited resources both in time and money. You cannot make that horse drink.

Perhaps you would review articles which have been published mainstream by your compeers Stritmatter, Waugaman, and Kositsky. Their various articles on Shakespeare and the Bible (in Oxford University Press' *Notes and Queries*) and on The Tempest (in *Review of English Studies* and *Critical Survey*) are of interest to Shakespeareans in general and thus deservedly were published.

"No one is suppressing anything...." A ludicrous comment underscoring just how out of touch some Stratfordians are when it comes to the realities of the SAQ. There are comments in this thread written by academics who have experienced the worst form of academic bias. It seems that the orthodox take it upon themselves to be the arbiters of what is and is not a legitimate topic for research and publication.

>>nt underscoring just how out of touch some Stratfordians are when it comes to the realities of the SAQ.

The reality of the SAQ is that one side lives entirely outside reality, in a Fantasy World where evidence and guesswork are counted equal and inconvenient matters of fact can be ignored.

Oxford died before a third of the work was written. Oxfordians have no satisfactory explanation of the fact that Shakespeare's work continued to develop and reflect trends in Jacobean theatre as its language, focus and genre diverged from the Elizabethan theatre which preceded it.

Almost all English Faculty academics accept that the Hand D additions to the manuscript copy of Sir Thomas More, held in The British Library, were written by the canon playwright. Closing the loop, professional handwriting ties it to the witnessed signatures of William Shakespeare on documents which include a will containing bequests to his fellow players. The man who signed the will was unquestionably Will from Stratford, the man who wrote the Hand D additions was unquestionably the Bard and paleography (http://oxfraud.com/HND-Hand-D-home) brings the two together and ties a knot Oxfordians cannot undo.

If you follow the relations between the Digges family and the Shakespeare family you will find a tight loop linking Digges' stepfather to Shakespeare of Startford-upon-Avon and young Leonard's commentary to Will's work, career and success.

The focus in many English Faculties, far from attempting to smother the authorship debate, is now on discriminating between hundreds of different Elizabethan and Jacobean authors, whose work is far more collaborative than previously thought. There is absolutely no place for Oxford's feeble artistic talent in the new genome they are building. He figures nowhere.

Oxfordianism is over. Wrong, and not even that wromantic. Almost all of it is reductionist drivel, trying to fit Shakespeare's Size 12 feet into Oxford's Size 4 shoes.

Far from Cinderella, Edward de Vere, with his mediocre poetry and dull, dull prose, barely qualifies as an Ugly Sister.

The standard chronology was made up to fit Stratford'd life. A work can be written long before it is published or performed. The ywo plays that are usually used to counter Oxford's authorship are Mac Beth and The Tempest, bot of which are dated on the basis of shaky ground--e.g. "equivocation" and "still-vexed Bermuthes" and a shipwreck in Bermudafor which Stratford supposedly saw a manuscript account.)The sources all were in existence before Osford's death

How can an attribution be made when there are only 4 or 5 signatures, all different in Stratford's hand?

Oxford certainly had a circle of writers around him that could have easily collaborated with him. English professors have their careers based on the attribution to Straford (and psychologically, they probably had some wish at some time that the could be brilliant authors.) Never expect a man to say the truth about something when his income depends on asserting the opposite, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair.